Chapter Text
Sansa Stark has become used to being woken in the tender hours of the night and called to do the bidding of Marquis Joffrey Baratheon, her one time betrothed and the grandson of her guardian Lord Tywin Lannister; to being asked to clean and cook and mend and do all such things that she was never supposed to do, as a young lady of a once great house.
But Sansa is no longer so prideful as she was a girl, and she is happy to put her hands to work, to get down on her knees alongside the servants; if only, she believes, it were not under the orders of such a vile boy as Joffrey, and in the house owned by the very people who helped ruin the good reputation of her family, who sent her sweet father to his death.
She tugs on her dress; too small and ragged, it leaves her ankles bare and pinches underneath her arms and across her chest. She drapes her faded shawl over her shoulders, trying to cover the large expanse of skin that the meagre fabric of the dress reveals. The servant who has come to wake her is knocking so frantically at the door of her cold attic room that she has no time to put up her hair so she leaves it as it is, in a long and untidy braid.
No one will be looking at her anyway, what needs she smarten herself for good company.
But when she leaves her room the servant says that she is to go to the drawing room, not the kitchens or the hallway, or the scullery. And she can hear, from the top of the stairs, the sound of men’s laughter and the clink of decanter against glass, smell the scent of pipe smoke drifting upwards.
She swallows her shame and walks down to meet her newest humiliation.
In the drawing room five men sit around the table with five hands of cards in front of them and a small pile of coins in the centre. She recognises Lord Willas Tyrell, Lord Dontos Hollard, and Lord Petyr Baelish the Chancellor of the Exchequer who sits next to Joffrey and watches her with an eager gaze. But the other man has his back to the door and she cannot see his face. He has dark, curling hair and wears a richly worked jacket.
Joffrey is more in his cups than she has ever seen him. His eyes bulge red, his chin is smeared with spit. He can barely keep himself upright in his seat, swaying like a metronome.
“Ah, here she is, my last betrothed. Come here, darling, and meet your new guardian.”
Joffrey beckons her over. There is movement in a corner of the room and Sansa sees that Cersei is here too, her cheeks red with wine, grinning like she has heard the very best jape.
Lord Baelish has spoken to her several times while visiting, when he was able to find her in some spot of the house where no one else could hear them, of coming to her aid, because of the love he bore her mother. He has sworn that he will find a way to spirit her away from here; has he achieved this aim? She doesn’t really want to be taken into his care, she doesn’t trust him or the way he looks at her sometimes, but surely anything is better than staying here?
“He has won you in a game of Loo,” Joffrey announces, cutting through her thoughts, “though he might have bought you for a few farthings, your true worth is so little. But I do so enjoy a good gamble.”
He sneers at the man across from him whose face Sansa has still not seen, mocking both him and her.
He does not seem to be speaking of Lord Baelish at all.
“You should have seen his eyes light up when he found out you still had your maidenhead,” Joffrey jeers and Sansa can feel her eyes go hot with tears, her stomach shake.
She will not cry in front of him, she will not give him that.
Lord Tywin, who normally curbs the worst impulses of his grandson, is away on urgent business. Tyrion, who has saved her several times from Joffrey’s japes, is not apparent, and must be drinking the night away at one of his gentleman’s clubs. Cersei, who is ever indulgent of her son, who seems to revel sometimes in his cruelty and madness, has evidently done nothing to stop him tonight. Why would she? Cersei has always told Sansa what a burden her presence is here, how the very sight of her turns her stomach.
Sansa, and her honour, have been sold in a game of Loo.
How sordid; how unbearable.
And then the man who has bought her stands up and turns around. He bows to her and says her name but her ears cannot hear, she can barely gasp her next breath.
For she recognises this man; she has heard of him; has had him pointed out to her by her brother years ago, who warned her vehemently of his reputation.
The Red Viper.
To be sold to such a man!
Sansa’s chin trembles, her insides go cold. I must be brave, she thinks, brave like my mother.
“Come along, my dove. You shall need to pack your belongings.” Cersei says, taking her by the hand from the room and up the stairs, digging her nails cruelly into the flesh of Sansa’s palm.
Sansa feels as if she did not truly wake up this night, as if she sleepwalks through a horrible dream. But such has been her life since her sweet father died.
“He will want you for a mistress, of course,” Cersei says gleefully, as she shoves Sansa’s meagre belongings into her trunk. “What else would a man like him want with a twenty year old maiden like you, with no good family to your name?”
She moves closer and takes Sansa by the chin, staring at her with her cold eyes.
“He will get you with child, like all his mistresses, his bits of muslin, and then abandon you to your fate. It is only what you deserve, my dear, for being such a prideful, rotten child. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, my lady.” Sansa replies.
Cersei sweeps out of the room with a laugh.
To be a mistress abandoned with a babe is to be ruined; Sansa knows this, she is not a silly little fool like she once was, dreaming of grand stories and dashing heroes.
But, she thinks, trying to find a slim silver lining, hasn’t she always wanted to be a mother? Wouldn’t a babe of her own be sweet? Perhaps she is still that foolish little girl.
Or she might die in childbed, like her mother. Would that be better than wasting away here, than being ruined by Joffrey as he has always threatened to do?
She shakes her head to clear such morbid thoughts.
She retrieves her dearest possession, the sampler in her mother’s stitch that she hid so carefully in her room so that no one could find it and destroy it, and tucks it inside her skirts. Stand up straight, my girl, she hears her mother’s voice say. Brush off those tears.
Sansa has only herself, and her own wits, to rely on now.
Only what little she has to offer: her courtesies, her faded beauty.
Her body.
If he has had many mistresses perchance he is a good lover and he will not hurt her, as Joffrey threatened to do on their wedding night. But what does she know of lovers, and of what men want of the women in their beds?
“You must make him fall in love with you,” Jeyne, the maid who has been her one true friend here, whispers to her as they embrace farewell in the hallway.
But Sansa knows that is impossible.
She is not the kind of girl that any man falls in love with anymore, she has never been.
*
Sansa has not been treated kindly, Oberyn knows; and she will be frightened by all that she has heard of his reputation, his mistresses and bye-blows. Thank the gods then for Ellaria who, of the both of them, has always been the better at soothing skittish maidens. Ellaria says it is because he tends to dash in too quickly, like he is fighting a duel for their hearts; and to this he always replies that if she has a problem with the opening act of his lovemaking she may easily find herself a better lover elsewhere.
“Men, and their fragile pride,” Ellaria says in return, throwing down her fan in frustration.
And invariably he then slips under her petticoats, to show her that he knows just how much she enjoys his pride, and to prove his willingness to better himself.
Oberyn is not a patient man.
This has served him well on many occasions – on the battlefield, with pistols at dawn, in races upon horseback, when rushing to the aid of several women in peril – but it will not do when a softening of the heart of a maiden of tender years, a soothing of long-time fears, is the desired outcome.
He helps Sansa onto the carriage, her hand trembling like a little bird in his, looking as wan as someone close to death. He tries to smile warmly at her. He tries to tamp down his fury at that Lannister worm, Joffrey, masquerading as a Baratheon, and the whole rotten family; at their appalling treatment of the Stark heiress; at the utterly abominable way they had treated his dear sister Elia, whose loss still burns in his gut like hot coals. But Sansa does not look up from her feet and, as the carriage leaves the street, she gasps a tiny gasp and faints in a slump on the seat.
Dash it, he says, and leaps over to help her upright.
Her body feels so light in his arms, her breath shallow like a rabbit. Her braid hangs down over his shoulder, like a coil of the softest rope she has flung off towards dry land looking for someone to save her.
Thank the gods they will arrive posthaste at his lodgings and he can cover her up with blankets and give her a hot drink to warm her. Thank the gods that Ellaria will soon be there to scold him, to comfort her; that Sansa will be safe now under their protection.
Thank the gods for his skill at cards.